Community Connections

W&L is proud to partner with the nonprofit organization NDPonics on a distinctive collaboration for the promotion of environmental and cultural conservation, place-based learning, and community building in the Irish Creek region of Rockbridge County.This initiative is anchored in the physical space now called Kihkǫspé:hla, a 6-acre parcel owned and managed under conservation easement by NDPonics. The site, a roughly 25-minute drive from the W&L campus, offers a building with bathroom facilities and internet capacity and is an appropriate base for hands-on projects and research related to environmental science as well as topics from various disciplines that will be better informed through location-based learning. Topics specific to indigenous culture - historic and present - including traditional ecological knowledge, widely recognized as key to meeting the current environmental crises of climate change and destruction of biodiversity, are particularly appropriate. The property is available to members of the W&L community for teaching, research, and programming purposes on request. Those interested in exploring opportunities to incorporate this land in teaching, research or programming should visit the Kihkǫspé:hla Living Lab page on the Provost's Office Curricular Resoures web page.

Connecting with local environmentally-oriented community organizations is a great way to get to know the wonderful people and unique opportunities in Rockbridge County.

Effective climate action requires strategies at the structural level and coordinated implementation at the local level. Check here for local initiatives.